Author to appear at Writers’ Guild meeting

GALLIPOLIS — The French City Writers’ Guild announces Kathleen McCoy as the upcoming guest speaker at its meeting on Tuesday, April 4 at Bossard Library at 6 p.m.

McCoy grew up on a farm outside of Rio Grande with her parents and twin sister. She attended Gallia Academy High School (class of ‘77), graduated from Georgetown College in Kentucky (1981) and then worked her way through graduate school as a creative writing fellow, a graduate teacher, waitress, factory assembler, dental hygienist and legal assistant while completing a master’s degree in creative writing and a doctorate in modern literature from the University of Missouri-Columbia (1991). She married Bob Medve and moved to New York in 1991. After a stint as a research analyst/writer in New York, she began teaching for SUNY Adirondack, where she chairs the English Division and teaches poetry and fiction writing, composition, public speaking, and modern and contemporary American and British literature. Bob and Kathleen’s daughter Elizabeth attends Middlebury College in Vermont.

Green and Burning, Glas Agus a Dhó, McCoy’s first book, was published in 2016 by Word Tech Communications in Cincinnati, the largest for-profit poetry-only book publisher in the nation. Her first chapbook, Night-blooming Cereus and other poems, was published in 2007 by Adirondack FemSoul, and her newest chapbook, More Water Than Words, is currently being published by Finishing Line Press in Kentucky, scheduled for release this spring. Her poems have been published on websites by AROHO, National Council of Teachers of English, and others and in national and regional literary journals including Mom Egg Review, Cherry Street, Expressions, and national magazines such as Sojourners.

McCoy won the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, Senior Faculty in 2006 from SUNY Adirondack and is the college’s 2017 winner of the State University of New York Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activity. She is currently a finalist for a Fulbright Award to teach and write at the Seamus Heaney Poetry Centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

During her upcoming presentation at the library, Kathleen will be reading her poetry, conducting a Q & A session and will have copies of her books available for purchase at the meeting. The meeting will be from 6 to 7:30 p.m. and all ages are encouraged to attend.

Additionally, the French City Writers’ Guild will also hold its regular, adults-only meeting on Thursday, April 6, from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

“Kathleen McCoy’s book, Green and Burning, is rife with intellect and instinct, with praise and sorrow,” said Michael White, director. “It seems less of the cultural moment, and more of the timeless moment—more like Heaney at his best, or Four Quartets, than any contemporary that comes to mind. This is a resonant and resilient book for any seeker in the realm of the spirit.”

White serves as director of the Creative Writing Graduate program at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of Travels in Vermeer, Vermeer in Hell (winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Prize), Re-Entry (winner of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize), Palma Cathedral (winner of the Colorado Poetry Prize), and The Island.